Post What? The Liminality of Multi-Racial Identity

• Main Author: Danielle Fuentes Morgan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2016-06-01
• Series: Humanities
• Subjects: multi-racial; identity; Barack Obama; popular culture; critical race studies; humor studies; twenty-first-century studies
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/5/2/46

This article, “Post What? The Liminality of Multi-Racial Identity,” argues that the successes and failures of 21st-century satire reveal the myth of post-raciality while simultaneously dismissing racial essentialism. I focus on three critical moments: the commercial success of Mat Johnson’s Loving Day, a text and forthcoming television show that examines the shifting self-identities of mixed-race individuals; the inability of a potential love interest on the television series, Louie, to accept a black woman as the ex-wife of the titular protagonist’s phenotypically white daughters; and Barack Obama’s self-designation as “black” on the census shortly after his election. I argue that the widespread reach of these instances, coupled with audience engagement and response, underscores the ways that the public realm frames a contemporary understanding of race as both meaningful and absurd.